During the Palms Neighborhood Council September 2014 Meeting, Treasurer Nick Greif (a representative for Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti’s Economic Development Business Team) and Area Representative Eli Lipmen (A Commissioner appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti, to set and oversee Neighborhood Council policy) used extortion to bully and financially hold the Palms Neighborhood Council hostage.

During his report, Greif allowed Lipmen to propose an illegal motion to ‘cut’ the Council’s funding. This plot showed the depths to which Greif and Lipmen will sink politically because it prevented the Council from conducting its business, and with the Council being an extension of the City of Los Angeles, the City was put in liability as Greif and Lipmen’s plot allowed the City of Los Angeles to have outstanding bills due (opening the City up to further financial liability).

The goal of this plot was to bully and extort the new board into filling and littering the open Council seats with people that Greif and Lipmen want; people of like mind who would have no hesitation in accepting a Council Member position under these circumstances. Since neither of these two, Greif or Lipmen, have any power on the board to make this happen professionally; they had to result to unprofessional and unethical tactics instead; putting their wants before the needs of the community that they were elected to represent, i.e., politics before people.

In addition, Greif and Lipmen led this plot to cut the funding even though they were on the Budget Ad-Hoc Committee (along with the Council President). The Committee met for days, allowed input from the community and other board members before coming up with a budget and deciding what needed to be funded. Greif and Lipmen played their respective parts through the Committee process flawlessly, only to do a complete 180-degree shift once it was time to pass all of the Council’s necessary funding motions.

Though Greif and Lipmen, ultimately, made this happen (as they are the board members who allowed and put forth the illegal motion to ‘cut’ the funding), there were others involved in this scheme as well.

Lipmen’s endorser Lee Wallach used his public comment to [seemingly] signal Greif and Lipmen that they should ‘cut’ the funding for the Palms Neighborhood Council (but not the funding for the tree trimming in Palms, that Wallach lobbied for his company to receive, before telling the council to ‘cut’ funding and not pay its bills).

With Wallach’s command clearly received, Lipmen was so eager to ‘cut’ the Council’s funding that he, excited and prematurely, starts to go into his premeditated speech before he’s supposed to; prompting Greif to tell him not ‘yet’…

After Lipmen gets the green light from Greif to begin, Lipmen makes the argument that the Council should not pay its bills because it wouldn’t be ‘prudent’ to do so until all of the seats on the Council are filled; with a ‘complete board’ (with people that Lipmen and Greif want).

Greif and Lipmen enlisted the aid of two new board members in order to pull this off: Cat Eagle Stevens and Trevor Mulligan. Stevens (who showed some promise as a candidate during the election) is supposedly Greif’s ‘girlfriend’, yet has shown in just a few short months that she has no objection to being passed around and letting any man put her into any position necessary to get the job done; whether it’s being the new face for Wallach’s mouth, or saying and doing whatever Lipmen tells Greif, to tell her to do. It’s one thing Ms. Stevens, to be new and unfamiliar, it’s another to not remember your lines… Then there’s Mulligan. Lipmen’s new guard dog; more of a chihuahua and not as savvy or polished as Lipmen’s recruits usually appear to be… Mulligan can be summed up as thus: in an attempt to [seemingly] derail the meeting and discussion, he questioned how the budget committee was formed, even though he was present at the meeting that the committee was formed, and took part in the vote that allowed that committee to be formed… Moving on.

Despite the best efforts and opposition of the other board members, Greif and Lipmen, with Mulligan and Stevens help, ‘cut’ the funding for the Palms Neighborhood Council, with a recorded vote of 4-to-3. The Palms Neighborhood Council annual funding that Nick Greif, Eli Lipmen, Cat Stevens, and Trevor Mulligan voted against, because they all agreed with Lipmen that it wouldn’t be ‘prudent’ included:

*A storage unit for the Council’s materials:(iii. MOTION: Allocate up to $1,450 [per annum] for the 1-year rental of a storage unit for Palms Neighborhood Council materials, to be paid in monthly installments)

*The Council’s address and mailbox:(iv. MOTION: Allocate up to $250 [per annum] for the rental of a P.O. Box for the Palms Neighborhood Council)

*A major component in the Council’s ability to outreach, engage, and communicate with its stakeholders and community (and was turned off until payment was received):(v. MOTION: Allocate up to $500 [per annum] for monthly payments to Constant Contact or another vendor to manage newsletter distribution)

*The Council’s webpage:(vi. MOTION: Allocate up to $500 [per annum] for monthly payment of the website hosting service and enhancements to the website to improve its effectiveness for the community)

*The company that handles the Council’s meeting minutes:(vii. MOTION: Allocate up to $1,800 [per annum] for monthly payments for transcription services (i.e. minutes writing) for the Palms Neighborhood Council’s General Assembly meetings)

The significance of this 4-to-3 vote is that Greif is the Council Treasurer, and his single vote would have allowed the Council to pay its bills and not be in default. Greif is on Mayor Garcetti’s economic team? Greif is supposed to be the Palms’ Council Treasurer? Greif has said that he would ‘keep [the Council’s] finances in order’? Greif has said that he would make sure that the ‘[Council’s] funding [was] well spent and cared for by someone with finance and government experience’? It would appear that Nicholas Greif is at odds with himself, because the person he pretended to be while running for election, clearly is not the same person who voted to intentionally put the City in default. What credibility does Nick Greif have after pulling a stunt like this? How can Nick Greif be taken seriously as the Council Treasurer; much less be taken seriously with anything related to finance ever again? Why would anyone ever again trust Nick Greif? How could they? If we were going to be cheeky, we would say that Mr. Greif has truly earned, is putting to use, and is the poster boy for his ‘B.S.’ degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

In addition, what makes this 4-to-3 vote even more bewildering, is that 3 out of the 4 votes to ‘cut’ the funding came from new board members. Greif, Stevens, and Mulligan are brand new, and right off the bat they have aligned themselves with Lipmen and Wallach. This speaks volumes about Greif, Stevens, and Mulligan as it shows an acceptance to participate in the kind of tactics that Lipmen and Wallach have routinely used over the years to pervert and molest the Palms’ community and the neighborhood council system, like an abused child helpless to fight back.

Lastly, based on their witnessed actions, Stevens and Mulligan appear to be nothing more than puppets made to dance when their master requires (or multiple masters, in Stevens’ case). They do not possess the qualities that you might find in a natural, or even a learned leader; nor do Stevens and Mulligan pretend to have these qualities as much as Greif does; perhaps that is why Greif was chosen and welcomed into Lipmen and Wallach’s cabal. If logic dictates, it is only a matter of time until Greif’s status will be elevated to the point where he will be included and trusted with some of the more routine and witnessed tactics that have become synonymous with Lipmen and Wallach, including getting caught committing campaign electioneering, publicly threatening neighborhood council board members, being publicly caught having secret meetings, getting publicly caught harassing voters, getting publicly caught harassing women, cutting off your Council’s funding until you get the people you want on it, and, Wallach’s specialty, getting publicly caught harassing Black People (which Wallach was personally told to stop doing by the LAPD). Congratulations Greif…